Logistically, though, the drum fill was created using the recording tool talkback. “Barking seals, that’s what it sounds like,” he said in a recent interview. It’s a descending 10-note tom-tom break that changed Collins’ career. Just past the 3:40 minute mark, the anticipation of the track drops as the iconic drum fill changes the pace of the song. “In The Air Tonight” is the reason why we love playing the air drums. I can feel it coming in the air tonight, oh lordĪnd I’ve been waiting for this moment, for all my life, oh lordĬan you feel it coming in the air tonight, oh lord, oh lord The drums and the drum solo/fill.

In an interview with Mix, Collins explained that he simply “opened mouth and came out.” He then recounted how he didn’t even write the lyrics down at first, but rather penned the lyrics on a piece of scrap paper after hearing his vocals back. The lyrics almost seem as if they were divined-they just spilled out of the singer. The lyrics.ĭistraught and heartbroken, Collins sang his emotions into existence. I’m not quite sure what the song is about, but there’s a lot of anger, a lot of despair, and a lot of frustration,” he said. I just wrote a sequence, and it sounded nice. “One day I was working on a piece in D-minor, the saddest of all. When I got back, she said she was leaving and taking the kids.”Īfter this jarring separation, Collins turned to songwriting. Just hold your breath when I’m over there.’ Then Genesis toured Japan. She said to me, ‘We won’t be together if you do the next tour.’ I said, ‘I’m a musician. “Genesis had done a tour that was far too long. “I wrote it after my wife left me,” Collins told Rolling Stone in 2016. Collins wrote this song after he and his first wife Andrea Bertorelli divorced, and the singer was haunted by the emotions that came rolling in afterward. “In The Air Tonight” sounds haunting because, well, it is slightly haunted. But what is it about this song that makes it so striking? The origins.

Beatles tell me why drums